


Memories of (our) Pain

by DestielsDestiny



Category: The Alienist (TV), The Alienist - Caleb Carr
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Multi, OT3, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-OT3, Sara's past, Subtle and slow build, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 21:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Later, in the years that follow, when she talks about it, if she talks about it at all, she will always say she found him.That she found her father, the day he killed himself.She never says how she found him.





	Memories of (our) Pain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/gifts).



> AN: This is both shorter and...odder than I had intended, but hopefully it does this fabulous ot3 a little bit of justice.

_Her footsteps had echoed on the polished floor. The sound was loud, jarring in her ears._

 

_Her father had sold most of the decorations and ornaments of the house, after her mother died._

 

_Her aunts used to admonish her father for it, “Really Frederick, you treat that child as if she were a son, not a daughter.”_

 

_Her father had always laughed, as if the whole thing was an absurd, antiquated oddity of conservative thinking._

 

00

 

“My father would have liked you, I think.” Kreizler’s startlement was gratifyingly genuine, his hand stilling against John’s cheek, his eyes locking with Sara’s.

 

John, for his part, displayed his usual lack of patience by twisting his head and shoulders around to look back at Sara as well, smearing a line of rouge along his cheek.

 

Laszlo absently reached for a clothe to brush it away, his eyes still on Sara’s. They saw things others didn’t, those eyes.

 

Before she met Kreizler, before she joined the police department and first walked into the alienist’s study, no one had ever had the brazen impropriety to ask her about her father’s death.

 

No one so much as mentioned his name in her presence. It was like he had never existed.

 

Sara smirked, “He had your same sense of…impropriety.” The word was straight out of aunt Sarah’s mouth, and Sara tried to pay it just the right amount of ironic distain warranted in this situation.

 

This “situation” being a new rash of murders on the wrong side of the city, another set of forgotten adolescents, their limbs askew and faces painted, the same peculiar shade of rouge red every single time.

 

Stevie had taken one look at the three of them that morning and bolted out the door, shooting a “Not on yer life Doc Kreizler!” over his shoulder.

 

Kreizler had looked from the empty doorway to Sarah and backed and sighed, raising a beckoning hand to John, “Come along John, it is for a good cause after all.”

 

Never let it be said John Moore was a bad sport, but even for him, merely huffing out an exasperated, “If only my grandmother could see us, she’d be appalled!” before hopping onto Laszlo’s study table and proceeding to allow the doctor to paint blush across his face was a testament to the effect Laszlo Kreizler had on those in his life.

 

Her father had had a similar effect on people.

 

Kreizler’s eyes were as sincere and red-rimmed with sudden dampness as they had been all those months ago in this same study, and it was all Sara could do to prevent her heart from turning over and tears of her own beginning to spill down her cheeks. “I am honoured Miss Howard.”

 

No one talked about her father’s death. No in the days after it happened, not in the months that followed, or the years after that. No one, from his closest relatives to his farthest acquaintances.

 

Certainly, they never spoke of it to Sara. They never spoke of him at all.

 

It was like he had never existed in the first place.

 

Sometimes, Sara pretended that was true. It was easier, often, than remembering.

 

Sometimes, many times, she hated Laszlo Kreizler for mentioning her father, for prying open that wound and pouring salt on it. For making her bleed.

 

For making her remember.

 

And sometimes…Sara blinked, letting a single tear fall down her face. Her father had always taught her tears were a sign of strength, not of weakness.

 

For man _or_ woman.

 

“The honour is mine, Dr. Kreizler.”

 

John’s throat clear sounded too loud for polite company, his own grin distinctly wet around the edges. “If you two are quite finished…” Teasing sincerity shone from his face, the hand gesturing to his smeared face equally stained with various shades of red and peach, and Sara felt a bubble of affection rise up her throat.

 

“John Moore, you look a positive fright!” She sounded exactly like her great aunt Mimie.

 

A laugh tumbled out after her words, and after a moment of confused yet companionable silence, the room was filled with nothing but shrieks of laughter, creaks of chairs kicked this way and that, and clangs of make up tins being chucked at dodging heads.

 

00

 

_Their eyes had met._

 

_It had been a good day, bright and clear and cold. Sara had skipped across the hall, down the stairs, her mouth already open to call for her father as the study door handle slipped from suddenly numb fingers._

 

_Their eyes had met, in the instant before he had pulled the trigger._

 

_And then there were only screams._

 

00

 

“Christ Kreizler, it’s just a drink! It won’t bite you.”

 

Theodore Roosevelt is many things. Brilliant, charming, honourable, ambitious, loud.

 

Many, many things. But one thing he is not is subtle.

 

Teddy Roosevelt and tack are never likely to find themselves joined together in the same sentence, as Sara is forced to ruefully acknowledge more times than she’d care to admit.

 

Case in point, a celebratory drink over a freshly solved case devolving into a staring match between two men who have been friends almost longer than she’s been alive, on the occasions when they aren’t just this side of enemies instead.

 

Sara wouldn’t have noticed it if she’d been standing any farther away, if social propriety was something Laszlo Kreizler had ever heard of, or Sara had ever found the time to care about.

 

She’s positive Roosevelt misses it entirely. But it was there, for a moment. A twitch. A flinch.

 

A spasm, running through Laszlo’s frame fast and hard enough to make his bad arm positively seize.

 

Sara’s eyes landed on the drink Kreizler was staring at, his good hand clenching in the air, half reaching for it and half not. It was whiskey.

 

For a moment, Sara is so torn with rage and impotence it is all she can do not to scream. The urge to shoot something, anything, is overwhelming.

 

_My father hid much from me._

 

Sara’s blood burned.

 

With a flick of her wrist, Sara downed the entire glass, savouring the burn as it cascaded down her throat.

 

She slammed the glass square on the desk, her eyes implacable and unyielding on her boss’s. “Dr. Kreizler does not care for whiskey Commissioner.”

 

Theodore Roosevelt is many things, but stupid is far from one of them.

 

“Perhaps some champagne then?” He produces the bottle with a slight fumble, but his gaze is warm and guileless, and for once, Kreizler allows them the illusion that he missed the undertones of their exchange.

 

But his eyes, when he toasts his flute towards them, are warm with gratitude rather than cold with pain.

 

00

 

_“Be brilliant Sara.” Her father used to whisper that to her, every night when he tucked her in._

 

_He used to say it to her every day as he saw her off to school. He said it to her that last morning, pressing a kiss to her forehead, holding on for just a heartbeat too long._

 

_Later, Sara will look back and realize what she didn’t then._

 

_Later, she will look back on that moment, and find comfort in it._

 

_In the way it allows her to believe that her father didn’t mean for her to be the one who found him._

 

_In the way it allows her to believe that he pulled the trigger in that moment, in the moment she came into the room, because it was too late for him to have stopped himself._

 

_Allows herself to believe that he pulled the shot at the last moment, because he wanted to live, for her._

 

_Later, she will look back, and be glad, that her father got a chance to say goodbye._

 

00

 

“Do you know what the last thing he said to me was?” Sara tightened her grip on John’s hand, pressing hard enough to feel the answering clench of his knuckles, even through the layers of fur and leather and wool.

 

Beneath their feet, dried leaves rustle gently at the edge of a gravestone, weathered before its time by the harsh New York winters.

 

Across John’s shoulders, Laszlo tightens his good hand on John’s shoulder. “What was it, John?”

 

Sara doesn’t know where he finds the strength to ask. To say those words.

 

The ghosts that surround them, that haunt their every hour, waking and sleeping, are intensely private things, even after more than a year of living through the most harrowing and unimaginable things together.

 

John pressed his free hand to his eyes, swiping at the moisture on his cheeks. “I just told him I’d asked Julia to marry me. He called me an idiot.” There’s a ghost of laughter in those words, even brittle with pain as they are.

 

John swallowed, gazing resolutely at the cold stone before them. “He always was the perceptive one.”

 

Laszlo met Sara’s eyes, tears standing bright in his eyes. Her own eyes gleamed liquid blue in the growing dusk. “Well, we certainly can’t argue with his judgement in this case John.”

 

The words should bite, and sting, and wound. They shouldn’t sooth, or bind, or mend.

 

But somehow, braving the elements together, for once and forever a united front against an indifferent and judgemental world, they help Sara find the courage to surge forward, arms snaking around shoulders, bodies automatically rearranging to accommodate pain and potential harm.

 

Somehow, rather than rip them apart, for once, words help bind them together.

 

00

 

_Be Brilliant Sara. Her father used to tell her that, every chance he got._

 

_Her father taught her how to shoot, how to fight, how to drink, how to smoke._

 

_Her father taught her how to grieve, and to feel pain, and loss, and unimaginable suffering, and keep going._

 

_And somewhere in all that pain and grief, Sara wakes up one morning, two warm and muscled bodies pressed against her own, skin on skin, a locked door the only thing between them and certain disaster, and realizes that most of all, her father taught her how to love._

 

_And be loved in return._


End file.
